[charlene]

SF: When did you learn how to read?

BK: The history of it goes back to Toronto. Whenever there were record dates or jingles to be done, the local jazz players were considered the best musicians. Whether or not they were right for the particular bag of music, they were still considered the upper echelon of musicians. If they were producing a rock record, you’d end up with a rock record with a jazz sound. You’d have maybe a lighter feel on the drums, a smoother feel on the bass. Maybe you’d have more ninth and seventh chords in the piano, instead of a major chord feel.

So I started doing a few studio dates in town. Coming from the Dave Clark 5 school of music, I was more into the sound of the drums and the feel of what was going on. A few people heard me and said, “We want you to play on our record.” That’s what started happening. When I started playing on records, a few arrangers around town said, “Hey, I want you to play on my jingle.” I said, “But I don’t read a lick!” They said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get you through it. I’d rather have it sound like you sound.” I went in, started doing jingles, and people started putting music in front of me!

SF: Even though you couldn’t read?

BK: Honestly. And I wouldn’t have a clue! Eric Robertson, a heavy-duty arranger in Toronto who has done some great, great work with Roger Whittaker, film work, TV, and jingles, was one of the first guys who started using me. I mostly did jingles with Eric. He would take the drum part and hum it to me. He would take five minutes with me and say, “Here’s how it goes. When it’s coming to the end, just watch me and I’ll give you a nod.” I’d be sitting there with thirty or forty musicians, and all of them would know how to read except me. The engineer run-through. They would all look at me like, “What’s he doing? Get this guy to play!” The producer was cool because he knew the situation. I was just listening and trying to follow.

I didn’t know what a sign was. I didn’t know what a coda was. I didn’t know what dotted notes were. I didn’t know what ties were. I knew a little of what quarters and eighths were. But repeat signs? If there were seventeen bars of music with repeat signs and codas, I thought there were seventeen bars of music! I thought you just went down the chart and when it was over, it was over.

So, the first date I did with Eric was a Lipton tea commercial. All I wanted to do when I first started playing was count until the end of the chart. So Eric counted it off. I got to the end of the chart and the rest of the band was still playing! I thought, “If I can’t even count the bars right, I’m in serious trouble.”

We went through a lot of that for a couple of months. Eric, a studio musician named Jack Zaza, and a producer named George Kwasniak were terrific and supportive in showing me the basics. And just by working a lot, there seemed to be more and more demand for somebody who sounded good as opposed to somebody who was technically proficient. I was filling a void in the city of Toronto. There were probably a hundred guys in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Memphis who sounded better than I did, were more technically trained, but because of the way Toronto developed musically and economically, that void had to be filled. Even though I was deficient in certain areas, people were using me. Talk about being the luckiest guy in the world! They educated me! I was getting paid while I was getting an education, making records, jingles and television shows.

I read pretty well now. I do three or four films a year and approximately 250 jingles. It’s a lot of, “Here’s your part!” I’ve had so much of that thrown at me now, that I can get through charts (depending on how difficult the part is) almost at the sight-reading level. Which is great!

SF: So first you developed your ears, and then your reading?

BK: You kind of hear what it’s supposed to sound like while you look at it. I never really sat down with a reading book. All of this time, I kept thinking that the studio work was going to be over; that as soon as I learned how to read, nobody would ever want to hire me again.

SF: You didn’t want to break the spell?

BK: Exactly right. I was afraid to really start to work at it because I thought I’d be so disappointed. I’d get to be good, get to know what I was doing, and then nobody would want to use me. But it didn’t! It just seemed to get more and more.

In the meantime, I went over to RCA records. They hired me away from Quality Records in an A&R capacity, and I worked for RCA for seven years while I was starting to get studio work. By the end of it, I was president of RCA’s Publishing Division in Canada. The studio work was so demanding that I had to give up the job at RCA. That was one of the best record-industry jobs in the country, I’ll bet, but I was so in-demand and I was having so much fun, now that I had some knowledge of what I was doing, and I was making so much money! I was making two or three times the amount of money part-time in the studio as I was making full-time as a president in the RCA Corporation. Things started getting totally out of hand. I kept fighting the part-time job because I kept thinking, “It’s got to stop. I’m going to wake up and the dream will be over.”

SF: Is there still a shortage of competent studio drummers in Canada?

BK: Well, in the last five years the void I was filling has been filled and more. There are a lot of good rhythm players. There’s a good twenty “first-call” drummers in town, who sound good, play well, and can run the gamut of styles. That’s happened in just the last five years. It’s become a very, very good town.